How Will We Remember Ohio?

I'm not sure what I want to accomplish in this post, but I think it's pretty modest.   I think I just want to make people aware of something, read a couple of articles about it, and think about it.  That's not so much to ask, I think.

In August 2012, in Steubenville, OH, a night of teen partying went horribly wrong.   If party after party of under-aged drinking wasn't bad enough, more than one of those parties apparently were the sites of repeated gang-rapes of a 16 year old girl.   Since that night, as the local law enforcement and civic leadership essentially decided to protect the student athletes rather than the female victim, the Internet has stepped in.   Publicity of the incidents, exposure of the students' web posts and tweets boasting of the repeated assaults, videos and photos of the attacks (including one showing the unconscious teen being carried from one party to another for more raping), and assorted other efforts to expose what Steubenville was apparently trying to ignore, have all occurred online.  

Two students have been arrested and are scheduled to stand trial in juvenile court in February, 2013.   None of the party-goers who witnessed the assaults, posted photos and videos of the assaults, and who failed to stop the attacks or report them to law enforcement have been charged.  The online hacktivist group "Anonymous" has gotten involved and leaked some of the evidence and Roseanne Barr has also gotten involved in applying pressure to political leaders in Ohio to ramp up the investigation.   Even porn actress Traci Lords has spoken about how she was raped as a ten year old when she lived in Steubenville, and speculated that the attack and "culture" in Steubenville must have had something to do with her embarking on a porn career.

The undercurrent to the entire sordid episode is that Steubenville has long revered their vaunted football team and is not likely to actively prosecute those students who participated in the rapes, observed the rapes, or failed to stop the rapes.  

Read about it:
New York Times article, one of the first mainstream news stories about the rapes
Boston Globe opinion column on "stigma shift" from victim to accused
The Nation blog on media explosion
New York Magazine story on threats against NYTimes reporter
New York Magazine story about Roseanne Barr involvement
Buzzfeed interview of Roseanne Barr


So, the question is, will Ohio be known as a place that celebrates gang rape, or a place where it is aggressively prosecuted?  I can't image what it must be like to be a female of any age in this town.